THE LAST FULL MEASURE

by Jack Campbell

978-1-59606-568-0

98pp/$20.00/December 2013

Jack Campbell's The Last Full Measure begins with the trial of
Abraham Lincoln for sedition in 1863. A witness to the trial, Joshua
Chamberlain, speak up in defense of Lincoln and finds himself sent to work
in a labor camp. Campbell's opening scene clearly indicates that his
version of the United States is a much darker place than our own after the
Constitution was derailed under the presidency of John Adams.

With Lincoln's arrest always in the background, the story follows
Chamberlain, a professor from Maine, as the train he is taking to serve out
his sentence is attacked by insurgents who want to see the United States
restored to a democracy more akin to what the Founding Fathers original
envisioned. The raid's purpose was to rescue Lewis Armistead, a
convicted army officer and Chamberlain's seat mate. When Armistead
vouched for Chamberlain based on their conversation, Chamberlain found
himself attached to the group of rebels.

Campbell takes Armistead, Chamberlain, and several other historical
figures from the Civil War such as Robert E. Lee, Winfield Hancock, and
James Longstreet and mixes them up. There is no clear division of
historical Confederates or Federal soldiers fighting for or against the
repressive government of Campbell's timeline. This allows Campbell to
more fully explore the interpersonal relationships between the soldiers
which built up in our own world prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
These relationships, along with personal codes of honor, determine which
side of the issue Campbell's versions of these men fall on.

Although the insurgents are ready to rise against the government, they
realize that they need something to rally for and Lincoln's imprisonment
gives them a cause, and the desire to free Lincoln and use his rhetorical
skill, easily recognized by Chamberlain, a professor of rhetoric, drives the
action of the story, as they must free Lincoln from the clutches of the
American government and then get him to Illinois, where he can speak and
have a support group.

The plot moves quickly and the characters are likeable, even the ones who
have elected to support the legal, if tyrannical, government. Campbell
does rely a little too much on coincidences between his version of the
timeline and our own timeline, although some of those can be explained away
by the accident of geography.

Campbell spends quite a bit of time detailing a dystopian nineteenth
century America which appears to be worse, in practically every way, than
the America we actually had. Although his novella gives a sense of
hope for that world's future, it also provides a great deal of material
which could be used to explore this world as it slides into a form of
dictatorship and after the grand battle in which Chamberlain takes part in
an attempt to reform the world.

At fewer than 100 pages, Campbell is limited in scope, and it fills that
scope quite well, even as it implies many more intriguing stories set in its
skewed version of the United States, which is the sort of world building
which alternate history can do so well.